（Asia University, Taiwan）A graduate student of the Visual Communication Dept. (VCD) at Asia University (AU), Jing-Wei Liu, wins the first-place award of 2015 JIA (Japanese Illustrators’ Association) Illustration Competition and is granted a bonus of JPY 300 thousand dollars. This competition is the most authoritative in the Japan illustration art circle. According to the JIA report, this is the first time a participant of the contest from Taiwan wins such an award. It is especially prominent that the award-winner Liu is just a student. The President of JIA, Takahiro Kanie, mentioned that the series work by Liu, “The Little Bag,” demonstrates a distinctive feature which is not found in traditional Japanese illustration arts. He emphasized that Liu’s work, with its simple colors and creative shapes, not only tells an attractive story but also brings forth interesting imagination.

The vice dean of the Creative Design College and the chair of the Visual Communication Design Dept. at AU, Prof. Sheng-Min Hsien, mentioned that the JIA Illustration Competition has been held for 15 years. A total of 348 professional Illustrations by 174 professional Illustrators from all over the world participated in the contest. Only 43 participants are awarded. “It is really commendable that Jing-Wei Liu’s artistic work is awarded in this competition,” said Prof. Hsieh, “and because being nominated in this contest is nearly a guarantee of a success in the professional career as mentioned in the JIA website, Liu is expected to become a new star in the illustration art circle in the near future.”

Chairman Hsien emphasized that an AU student’s winning of this award proves a success of AU in school running and teaching. “The teaching strategy of the VCD Department includes four factors: story-telling  every picture used in teaching should tell a story; visualization  every idea should be pictorialized and visualized; fantasy  the approach of superrealism should be adopted to implement imagination; and localization  Chinese elements should be injected to yield a flavor of local culture,” added Hsieh.

Jing-Wei Liu, mentioned that he wins the award by a series of five illustrations under the title of “The Little Bag,” including “Lost in the City,” “Make Up One’s Mind” and “Don’t Give Up.” He revealed that he has expanded these five art pieces to a total of 100 illustrations which will be published by Rich Heart Publishing Inc. in Taiwan at the end of this year.

“The illustrations were about a story of a lonely traveler, The Little Bag,” said Liu. He pointed out that The Little Bag was personified in the story, and “he” makes friends in the trip. “Everything is fine until another ‘bag’ questioned him that he has no master; and immediately the Little Bag fell into the unhappy feeling of incompleteness,” said Liu. “Later, The Little Bag got rid of sadness, and gathered several abandoned “bags” to form a circus, bringing joys to people henceforth by their performances.” These illustration artworks show many Taipei City’s landscapes and a lot of Chinese characters. “The entire story is very fantastic with the illustrations looking both surrealistic and authentic,” added Liu.

The Japan Illustrators' Association holds regularly the JIA Illustration Competition every year, and call for participation from March to June. This activity attracts attention from a great many of international professional illustrators. Awarded works in the competition are exhibited in Tokyo on October. In the past 15 years, the winners of the award include many famous picture-book artists and world-renown illustrators like Yumiko Komatsu, Eric Freeberg, etc.